‘It’s so much of a cliché I feel embarrassed, but’s that’s what clichés are built on, right? Populist truth. My mother got plucked, waxed and facialed, preened, steamed and blow-dried, while he picked his nose in public and bored us all to death with right-wing politics. She went to Pilates five times a week while he lightly jogged up and down a pitch every Sunday with his paunch in his hands. What a fucking liberty.’ Her rage shimmers. ‘I’d go into her bedroom sometimes in the mornings and she’d be there in perfect matching lace underwear. What did he do for her? She starved herself into the
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